On 25/06/2020 18.03, Anton Aylward wrote:
On 19/06/2020 12:49, James Knott wrote:
On 2020-06-19 12:16 PM, ken wrote:
This kind of situation calls for a different kind of solution. Rather than everyone stomping on everyone else's signals, it would make a lot more sense for people living close by one another to share their access points.
How would they manage that? The only way that would be even possible would be to use VLANs and multiple SSIDs. Also, consumer grade gear tends to support only a few SSIDs, assuming it does it at all. Then we get to the minor detail of how the connection is made. That would involve running Ethernet cables from all the neighbours to a common point. I live in a condo, which means I have wall & floors/ceilings separating me from my neighbours. In order to run cables, I would have to drill holes through the common element, which I am not allowed to touch.
(no problem to drill those holes here (Spain), if both neighbours agree (better in writing). But there is no need to do that in relatively modern buildings, as there are already ducts that we could wire in that manner).
Then there are the legal implication ....
Technically, it would be perfectly possible for a building to share an internet connection with a bunch of neighbours, sharing the cost and the infra. You would need one VLAN per home, I think, isolating each home from others. The problem would be that the Telco companies hate this (and their local laws protecting them). You can not share a home connection, you would have to hire some other type of connection, if they have it. In fact, there are villages in Spain where all neighbours share a single WiFi setup done by the council, gratis (ah, socialism! ;-p). They do this because the Telcos refuse to do home connections or they ask impossible prices. Possibly, they don't even have fixed phones at the houses. Years ago, someone from Russia commented in this mail list that they had an Ethernet connection network spanning entire blocks on the city. A big intranet, free. For connection to Internet they needed to pay and connect to a dedicated gateway in that LAN. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)